Helen Goss Vibberts, 89, Dedicated Life to Service

Six years out of Vassar, in 1943, Helen Platt Goss Vibberts boarded the Pan Am Clipper - a flying boat - in San Francisco, Calif., bound for Hawaii. In her crisp Naval WAVE uniform she was, to use the vocabulary of that time, a dish. Helen was the only woman and the only junior officer aboard; all the rest were generals or admirals.

"There was only one stateroom on the plane," Helen later recalled, "and the men were gallant - they let me, a lieutenant junior grade, have it during the entire 15 hour-flight from San Francisco. The generals and admirals all sat up." Just after the outbreak of World War II, Helen had volunteered for active military duty, setting a pattern of service she would follow all her life.

Helen died peacefully a little after sunrise on Saturday morning, Nov. 12, at New Britain General Hospital in the company of her family. She was 89 years old.

She was born July 20, 1916, at 48 Grove Hill in New Britain, Conn. Her father was Stanley T. Goss, cofounder of Goss and DeLeeuw Machine Company. Her mother was Louise Platt Goss. She was graduated from the Oxford School in Hartford in 1933 and from Vassar College in 1937. As a graduation gift she was taken by her parents on a grand tour of Sweden, England and France. Returning home, she spent the next two years teaching dyslectic students at the Forman School in Litchfield, Conn., under the direction of Dr. Samuel Orton, one the first persons to diagnose dyslexia and develop a treatment for it.

In the Navy, Helen was trained in communications in Northampton, and reported for duty to the office of the New York city port director. While in New York, she roomed with three other WAVE officers - Phronsie Vibberts Conlin of Oak Bluffs, Betsy Chamberlain and Elsa Norgaard - who became lifelong friends. Helen was promoted to head of the coding department and then received a posting to the Fleet Naval Radio Station in Wahiawa on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.

After the war, she visited the Big Island and Kauai and returned home on a hospital ship, the Solace. She mustered out of the Navy as a full lieutenant.

Helen then moved back to New York where she worked for Time Inc. in the communications office and eventually progressed to the newsroom. Her superiors thought so well of her that she was offered a job as head of the newsroom in Paris, but she declined for personal reasons.

Helen and Phronsie Vibberts Conlin had become close friends during their stint in the Navy, and in the summer of 1948 Phronsie invited Helen to the Vibberts's home in Harthaven. The occasion was the annual community clambake. Helen found herself shucking corn and washing buckets of clams in the company of Phronsie's brother, Jack Vibberts. "They took to each other right away," Phronsie said, "and quickly became inseparable."

On May 12, 1951, Helen and Jack were married in New Britain, Conn. The couple moved to Farmington for two years, then to Southington, where she lived for the rest of her life.

"Jack and I designed the house together," she recalled, "and we did a lot of the work on it. We cleared the woods, planted a garden and established the lawns. We painted it inside. It was a lot of fun." Jack and Helen purchased their lot in Southington from old friends and fellow Vineyard summer residents Sandy and Jinnie Low. Soon they were joined by other friends who purchased land nearby -- Stan and Lois Hart, Heini and Kay Schauffler and Jim and Sis Chamberlain. They called themselves The Swamp Yankees.

Helen fondly recalled her Southington community: "We gathered almost every night. We cooked shad by nailing the fillets to a board and propping it up in front of a roaring fire. We barbecued steaks in a fire of apple wood from trees on our property. We ate sashimi and cooked sukiyaki long before Japanese food became the rage." There were songs with Sandy Low on guitar and Heini Schauffler on fiddle as accompaniment.

As a small child, Helen spent her summers in Nantucket at her parents' home on Pawguvet Lane. Next door neighbors were the family of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, whose lives formed the basis of the play and movie, Cheaper by the Dozen. She loved being aboard Gaviota, her father's motorboat. When she married Jack, a longtime summer resident of Harthaven, Helen moved to the Vineyard where "a Nantucketer was graciously accepted."

The Vibberts's summer home in Harthaven looks out over Harthaven harbor and the ocean. It was peopled by a large extended family of Vibberts, Harts, Moores, Peases and many others. Helen and Jack loved to fish Vineyard waters for blues and striped bass aboard Jack's boat Windward II, or with Stan Hart aboard his Erford Burt cruiser Curlew, or with Sandy Low in his Hubert Johnson sea skiff Dollop. Through her artist friends, Sandy and Jinnie Low, Helen was introduced to the artists Denys Wortman and Thomas Hart Benton and the well-known Saturday Evening Post cover illustrator Steven Dohanos. Steve painted a scene of the Vibberts family and other Harthavenites which appeared on the Post cover in the July 31, 1948, edition.

Helen and Jack loved to travel - often to England, Wales and Ireland and on many cruises aboard friends' boats exploring Bermuda, the Exumas and the British Virgin islands. Later in life, Jack purchased Skimmer, a 29-foot Dyer power boat, in which they cruised Long Island Sound, Gardner's Bay and the Vineyard Sound - often mooring her in Harthaven harbor. Helen loved to play golf and tennis and was an avid bridge player. She enjoyed sewing and needlepoint.

Helen was a constant volunteer. Among her first loves was the New Britain Museum of American Art, where she served on the women's committee from 1967 until her death and was secretary-treasurer for 22 years. She helped edit the museum's newsletter and helped establish the museum's traditional Twelve Days of Christmas. She was a member of the building and grounds committee. A blood bank captain of her local Red Cross for 30 years she also served as a board member. She edited the volunteer newsletter. She was given three Red Cross awards, one of them the Volunteer of the Year award for 1985-86. She was also secretary of the Connecticut Red Cross, Connecticut Council.

Helen was a devoted member of the First Church of Christ in New Britain, serving as a member of the Women's Fellowship, cochairman of the flower committee and as one of three chairmen for the building committee for the new church on Corbin avenue. A member of the Garden Club since the early fifties, she was president from 1962 to 1964. The club honored her by making her a life member of the Federated Garden Clubs of Connecticut, and this year presented her with an award recognizing 50 years of service as "an endless source of enthusiasm and inspiration." Helen was a member of the New Britain Jaycees and the New Britain Civic Improvement Committee.

She is survived by her brother, Charles P. Goss; her sister, Elizabeth G. Young; her sister in law, Phronsie Conlin, and many nephews and nieces. Donations to honor Helen may be made to the charity of the donor's choice.